How to host your own web server

OpenStack is a free and open-source software platform which provides IAAS (infrastructure-as-a-service) for public and private clouds. OpenStack platform consists of several inter-related projects that control hardware, storage, networking resources of a datacenter, such as: Compute, Image Service, Block Storage, Identity Service, Networking, Object Storage, Telemetry, Orchestration and Database. The administration of those components can be managed through the web-based interface or with the help of OpenStack command line. Install OpenStack in CentOS 7 and RHEL 7 This tutorial will guide you on how you can deploy your own private cloud infrastructure with OpenStack installed on a single node in CentOS 7 or RHEL 7 or Fedora distributions by using rdo repositories, although the deployment can be achieved on multiple nodes. Requirements Minimal Installation of CentOS 7 Minimal Installation of RHEL 7 Step 1: Initial System Configurations 1. Before you begin preparing the node in order … [Read more...] about How to Install Your Own Cloud Platform with OpenStack in RHEL/CentOS 7

Your company's data is important, but how well do you protect it? What would happen in case of a fire, or if an employee accidentally (or purposely) deleted a large amount of data? You need a backup solution, but what do you pick? How do you even begin to traverse the multitude of options out there to pick the one that's right for your company? To help you make this important decision, TechRepublic is using what we have dubbed the D.I.C.E. (Difficulty, Investment, Capability, Expandability) framework. We will walk through each of these points so you will be able to apply them to your small business environment, and then we will help you pick the solution that is right for you.To help you apply the D.I.C.E framework, we have created a sample Excel worksheet that incorporates the framework described. The worksheet is available in the download version of this document. Enter your weighting for each of the categories in the worksheet and then rate the importance of each category for each … [Read more...] about Apply the D.I.C.E framework to determine your best backup server solution

These days, in Linux, we must almost never access the raw command line — a bare prompt in a text-only environment. We have terminal emulators; that is, special windows that host both the line(s) in which you type commands, and the hidden interpreter (shell) that actually executes them.These emulators can be customized and preconfigured to speed up your work in several ways. Here I'll show you how to do it with the GNOME terminal, the default one in many Gnu/Linux distributions targeting novice users.Some features of this terminal that make it a fast and very adaptable command line environment are well known to most users. The GNOME terminal has tabs, just like Firefox or any other modern browsers, to pack as many sessions you need in the smallest possible space. Other capabilities of GNOME terminal are less known, but equally useful. Here are the ones that make it possible to create your own terminals and have them always at hand.The GNOME terminal executable, which not … [Read more...] about How to make your own GNOME terminals

Ask any Linux enthusiast, and they’ll tell you how awesome an operating system Linux can be. (Well, except Bryan Lunduke, who will say it sucks before he says it’s awesome.) For the desktop user, the freedom from worry about most viruses is a big plus, and not spending $100 upgrading Windows is a big plus too.As awesome as Linux is for desktop use, Linux (and BSD for that matter) truly shines as a server. While providing web-based services is one of those server-y things Linux does really well, Linux can do a lot more than host a blog about family outings.If you’re looking to host your own services instead of paying for or relying on those in the cloud, running your own home server is one of the best ways to keep your files private.Choosing the specific Linux distribution for your home server can be daunting in itself since there are so many strains to choose from. Most of the time, I just roll with Ubuntu and recommend that first-time users do the same. The reason is … [Read more...] about How to have a Linux home server on the cheap

Your web site will likely be the hub of your marketing plan and a professionally designed web site may be a long term goal. If your start-up budget is getting out of control, though, you can save a lot by creating your own web site. You might be surprised by how inexpensively you can come up something that looks top notch. Going through the exercise might also help you hone your businesses’ focus and serve as a jumping off point for your overall marketing plan.There are the four basic steps involved in getting your website up and running:• Registering a domain name for your site.e-commerce or other functionalities to your website's design. Registering your domainThere are hundreds of web sites that will allow you to choose and register your businesses’ domain name (the words that follow the www in your web site's address.) Some of these sites are also web hosting and design sites, while others are strictly for domain name registration. The cost of registering the … [Read more...] about How to Build Your Business Web Site

This quick tutorial will show you how to develop your own functional IM bot that works with Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live and all other popular instant messaging clients.To get started, all you need to know are some very basic programming skills (any language would do) and web space to host your “bot”.For this example, I have created a dummy bot called “labnol” that listens to your IM messages and return related search phrases based on Google Suggest. To see this live, add [email protected] to your GTalk buddy list and start chatting. If you like to write a personal IM bot, just follow these simple steps:Update: Imified is no longer available but you can use Google Scripts to create bots.Step 1: Go to imified.com and request an invite. You should also give your bot a decent name because you can have just one bot per email address.Step 2. An email with a secret key should arrive in your Inbox the next minute.Step 3. Now it’s time to create … [Read more...] about How to Write your own IM Bot

Most web hosting companies charge you a fixed monthly fee and in return, they offer you a finite amount of storage space for hosting your web pages, images and other files.It doesn’t really matter if you are hosting a simple website with 10 pages or a comprehensive product catalogue with thousands of pages – the amount you pay for hosting will be the same.There’s also a limit on the amount of traffic (bandwidth quota) that your site can receive in a month. If you exceed that limit, the hosting provider is likely to suspend your site or you’ll be asked to upgrade to a different plan. On the other side, if your site receives only minimal traffic, you’ll still have to pay for the full bandwidth.Unlike web hosting companies, Amazon S3 follows a ‘pay for what you use’ model where you only have to pay for the exact amount of storage and bandwidth that your website is consuming in a month.There’s another advantage – the Amazon S3 SLA … [Read more...] about [Tutorial] How to Host Your Website on Amazon S3

The Royal Family of UK has selected Google as the web hosting provider for Prince William’s official wedding website. The site, available at officialroyalwedding2011.org, contains news updates, photo galleries and videos and everything is hosted on Google App Engine.What’s new here? Web developers have long used Google App Engine to host web apps in the cloud – see Sleeping Time and Tall Tweets for example – but this is probably the first time that Google’s infrastructure is being used to host a ‘static website’ of an event that will get plenty of press attention and web traffic in the coming days.There are quite a few advantages with hosting websites on Google App Engine. First, it should be more reliable since your site will get served through Google’s own data centers.Second, if you have a low traffic website, it is highly likely that you won’t have to spend a penny for web hosting. You get 1 GB of free storage space for hosting … [Read more...] about How to Host your Website on Google for Free

Do a Google search like “proxy servers” and you’ll find dozens of PHP proxy scripts on the Internet that will help you create your own proxy servers in minutes for free. The only limitation with PHP based proxies is that they require a web server (to host and run the proxy scripts) and you also need a domain name that will act as an address for your proxy site.If you don’t have a web domain or haven’t rented any server space, you can still create a personal proxy server for free and that too without requiring any technical knowledge.Here’s one such proxy site that you can build for your friends in China or even for your personal use (say for accessing blocked sites from office). This is created using Google App Engine and, contrary to what you may think, the setup is quite simple. Go to appengine.google.com and sign-in using your Google Account. Click the “Create an Application” button. Since this is your first time, Google will send a … [Read more...] about How to Setup your own Proxy Server for Free [Updated]

If you are looking for a place to quickly host your websites but don’t have access to any web server, Google Drive is a great alternative. You can use Google Drive to host basic websites or even complex JavaScript based web apps. You may upload and publish any kind of static content* on your website including HTML pages, images, CSS, icons, audio & video files including podcasts.If you are using the old Google Drive, you can easily host websites on Drive. First upload your website files to a folder inside Google Drive, set the sharing permissions of that folder as public, open the index.html file in the Google Docs viewer and then click the “Preview” link to get the URL of your website.However if you have migrated to the new Google Drive, you’ll be disappointed to learn that Google has dropped the web hosting feature. You can still create public folders inside Drive but the option to publish that folder as a website is gone.No worries as there’s still … [Read more...] about How to Host your Websites on Google Drive